Jesus offers a challenge, not comfortable words or an easy win
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
This week, we read from the book of Sirach. It presents Wisdom as a person alongside God who both shares God’s life and God’s life with us. It’s no wonder the Christian tradition looks back on the figure of Wisdom and sees a foreshadowing of the Son and the Holy Spirit!
When Jesus comes into the world and is filled with the Holy Spirit, it makes sense to see Him as Wisdom in the flesh. In a series of episodes in the Gospel of Mark, He marks out a path of wisdom for evangelization.
A father brings a possessed boy to Jesus and says: “If you can do anything, have compassion and help us.” Jesus sees an opening and proposes a new horizon for his thought and action: “If you can! Everything is possible for one who has faith.”
The disciples are arguing about who among them is the greatest. Jesus sees an opening and proposes a new horizon for their thought and action: “If anyone wishes to be first, he must be the last of all and the servant of all.”
The Pharisees ask Jesus about permissible grounds for divorce. Jesus sees an opening and proposes a new horizon for their thought and action: “What God has joined together no human being must separate.”
There’s wisdom for us in the pattern of Jesus’ words and deeds! In each of these situations, Jesus isn’t offering comfortable words or pursuing an easy win. The new horizon He proposes is a challenge. Jesus, teach us to see these openings more readily and to propose the challenge of the Gospel with your own love!
This week, we also hear a lot about the “law of the Lord.” When Americans think of the law, we tend to think first (and sometimes only!) of restrictions on our actions. But that’s not the biblical perspective on the law. For biblical writers, knowledge of the law leads to greater freedom: The more you know about the law and follow it, the better off you’ll be.
Now, there are different kinds of laws. With the physical laws of the universe, you can’t ignore them, and their consequences are immediately evident in your body. If you step out of a third-floor window, you fall down and get hurt! If you touch a live wire, you get a shock. With moral and spiritual laws, on the other hand, you’re free to ignore them in your action. The consequences are not immediately evident, because God wants creatures who can give free obedience to moral laws, not just automatic obedience to physical laws.
But violations of moral and spiritual laws have an impact on your soul, just as physical laws have an impact on your body! The history of ancient Israel is the story of what happens when a nation follows or does not follow the law of the Lord. Ultimately, the story of every individual soul is the same.
God’s world contains both kinds of laws: physical laws, as well as moral and spiritual laws. If we think about it, the way physical laws work on the body is a visible reminder of how spiritual laws work on the soul. In the end that, too, is an expression of the wisdom of God.
